Will YouTube ban The Rebel? Help us build a conservative alternative

They Can't Stop Us

Justin Trudeau, Rachel Notley, every left wing activist in Canada -- they’ve been trying to stop us at The Rebel for more than two years. And I was never worried until now. Because they’ve finally figured out how to do it. And we need your help if we’re going to survive.

On August 1, an ominous blog post from YouTube changed everything.YouTube is how we get our message out. We have more than 850,000 YouTube subscribers. We’re one of the biggest YouTube news channels in the world — by far the biggest in Canada.

They called it “an update to fight terror content online”. It does start out talking about terrorism, but then it moves to what YouTube calls “controversial” ideas. That could mean anything. That does mean us. Because we talk about the controversies of the day. Here’s what YouTube says they’re going to start doing to YouTube channels like us:

Tougher standards: We’ll soon be applying tougher treatment to videos that aren’t illegal but have been flagged by users as potential violations of our policies on hate speech and violent extremism. If we find that these videos don’t violate our policies but contain controversial religious or supremacist content, they will be placed in a limited state.

So they’re not just banning terrorist videos. They’re banning things that aren’t illegal, they are just controversial, or potentially controversial according to some complainer online. Well, all of our content is “potentially” controversial, especially to thin-skinned whiners on the left — like Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley, to name a couple.

And the very day that YouTube released their new policy about “controversial” people, they shut down the account of our friend, Prof. Jordan Peterson. No notice, nothing. Just blocked. They eventually put it back up. But how long will it be until they take it down for good?

We don’t know if YouTube decided to attack Jordan Peterson themselves, or if someone asked them to do so. Like when Justin Trudeau’s office asked that Google delete search results linking to websites made when Harper was in office. And that’s what worries us. There is no transparency in these decisions. YouTube just blocked Jordan Peterson one day, and didn’t tell him anything. And he’ll never know what happened.

Do you think we have a few years left on YouTube before we’re banned? A few months? Maybe a few days? It’s only a matter of time. So what then?

Our Plan

So, we’re going to build an "app" — that’s short for an application. What used to be called software.

We’re going to build an app that we own — not owned by YouTube. An app that you can use to watch us on your smart phone — we’ll have both an Apple iPhone and an Android version. And it will work for your laptop, or even on your TV set, through Roku or Apple TV.

We’ve actually been working on this app for months. We think it will be ready in September.

It will be a free app. You can download it for free. You can watch all our short videos for free. Just like always.

But we’ll own the app. So no-one can have that power over us. No-one can have that power over you.

The app will have everything in it — not just all our videos that are right now on YouTube, all 6,500 of them. But it will have our TV shows too — the paywall stuff, like the daily Ezra Levant Show. And we’re launching more shows after Labour Day, so the timing is perfect.

The app will have other things in it too — all the social media right in it, feeds like Twitter, Facebook, etc. But also special notifications from us to you — again, something that can never be blocked by an outside company. No third party company will get in your way of watching our stuff.

The app will continue to work with YouTube, until the moment YouTube does a Professor Peterson on us, and kills our account there. But guess what — that very moment, we push a button, and we go 100% self-sufficient, with our own video player. That no-one can take away from us or from you. The app will do that.

We’re going to stay on YouTube as long as we can — we like them, even though they hate our guts. But when they finally come for us, we’ll have another place to go. Where Trudeau’s lobbyist friends can't touch us or you.

But we don’t have the budget to do this on our own. We’re not the CBC, that gets $1.5 billion a year from Justin Trudeau, and acts like it. We’re 100% independent. We can’t afford this. But at the same time, we can’t afford not to do this.

That’s why we need your help.

How You Can Help

Here's how it breaks down:

Developing the app is going to cost us a lot of money. $120,000, for it to have the functions I mentioned above — notifications, social media, and play our video content.

Integrating the app with our video hosting and with payment systems — that’s another $19,000.

$90,000 to build a proprietary video player, that runs the videos in the app. That serves up all the gigabytes worth of videos, on demand, quickly, in high def, to replace what YouTube gives us now free.

To move our 6,500 videos over from YouTube to the app is about $13,000 — or about two dollars a video.

To upgrade our existing TV apps for Roku and Apple TV is $20,000.

And $40,000 to upgrade our computer software and servers at our headquarters, to make all of this work.

Together, that’s $302,000.

I know that’s a lot. It’s the biggest expense we’ve ever had in our history. That’s what it costs to make your own conservative alternative to YouTube — and to make it better, too, so you can take it on the go, in a beautiful, easy-to-use app on your phone, that seamlessly works at home on your TV and laptop.

Everything in one place — no more signing in and then signing in again.

That’s a lot of money. But we need to do this, don't you think?

Can you please help? We need to finish the app — and we need it the sooner the better. I have no idea if Google plans to come for us like they came for Professor Peterson — and we won’t know until the moment it happens, they’re sneaky that way.

Can you please help -- with $5, $50 or even $500?

Perks for Donors

$100Donors who give at least $100 will get their names permanently displayed on a special thank you website.

$250Donors who give at least $250 will have their names displayed in a special thank you video as well as being on the thank you website.

$1,000Those who donate $1,000 or more we’ll have their names engraved in brass on a beautiful plaque that is hung in Rebel HQ.

$10,000For the very special people who donate $10,000 or more, Ezra will meet them for lunch in Toronto or any major city in North America. And they will also get their names on a plaque.

$50,000If some amazing guardian angel wants to donate $50,000, then we will literally name our entire world headquarters for them, for one year. Ezra will end every show by saying "we’re signing off from the John Smith world headquarters of The Rebel", or whatever name you like! (Subject to editorial discretion.)

Support Us By Mail

You can contribute by cheque to support our crowd funder too. Please make it payable to "TheRebel" and add "They Can't Stop Us" to the memo section, and send it to:

The RebelPO Box 61056 Eglinton/Dufferin ROToronto, ON M6E 5B2

Donate & Contribute

You can help us reach each of our goals by clicking the red buttons below to donate.

Goal: $19,000.00

To integrate the app with our video hosting system, and with our payment system will cost $19,000. That will allow you to make in-app purchases, like shopping in our online store or subscribing to Premium Content.

Goal: $120,000.00

We need to make sure our apps are available on all mobile devices. There are really only two major providers in mobile apps, Apple and Android. Please help contribute so we can develop a mobile app that works on your device.